Letter: Climate change causing lakes’ water level to drop

Climate change causing lakes’ water level to drop

I was astounded on Jan. 2 when The News published two articles that discussed the Great Lakes levels and local weather and neither mentioned climate change or global warming. Nobody in this day and age can exclude either or both from any discussion of weather or the Great Lakes.

Climate change determines most current winter conditions and resulting lake levels. Unfrozen lakes and lack of snow mantle of the past few years both result from accelerated warming trends of the planet. Nothing escapes this change. The same forces that melt the polar ice and the Greenland Glacier deprive the Great Lakes of water.

The long-term trends point to deep changes that will alter our region and the Great Lakes forever. The waterways of the entire nation have lower levels now and for the foreseeable future, and this condition has been predicted in recent years in nearly any study of climate change.

There is not a serious geographer or climatologist who denies the change. Most argue over its pace and some still discuss sources, like a possible lessening effect by increased cloud cover, but the change is thoroughly certified. Using past performances to predict future conditions is no longer a valid tool. There are no lake level cycles of any consequences that are not subject to the inflows from snow and water. These are changed forever.

We have dumped carbon dioxide and related gases into our very thin mantle of protection, Earth’s atmosphere, for over 150 years and created a greenhouse effect that appears to be accelerating exponentially, thanks in part to a new wild card, methane gases.